TIJUANA,
Mexico - A restaurateur in
this border city ran another business smuggling Lebanese compatriots into the United States,
some with connections to Hezbollah (search). A Sept. 11 commission staff report
called him the only "human smuggler with suspected links to
terrorists" convicted in the United States. But he is not
unique, according to an Associated Press investigation based on government and
court records and scores of interviews.

Many
smuggling pipelines through Latin America and Canada
have illegally channeled thousands of people from countries identified by the U.S. government
as sponsors or supporters of terrorism.

The
men flocked to the cafe under the sign with the cedar tree, symbol of their Mideast home. Here, in this
alien border land, it was the beacon that led to an Arab "brother"
who would help them complete their journey from Lebanon
(search) into America.

They
would come, sometimes dozens a month over a three-year period, to find SalimBoughaderMucharrafille (search) - the cafe owner who drove a
Mercedes and catered to some of Tijuana's more
affluent denizens, including workers at the U.S. consulate only a short stroll
away. His American customers were unaware that the savvy boss of La Libanesa cafe ran a less reputable business on the side.

Until
his arrest in December 2002, Boughader smuggled about
200 Lebanese compatriots into the United States,
including sympathizers of Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organization by U.S.
authorities. One client, Boughader said, worked for a
Hezbollah-owned television network, which glorifies suicide bombers and is
itself on an American terror watch list.

"If
they had the cedar on their passport, you were going to help them. That's what
my father taught me," Boughader told The
Associated Press from a Mexico City prison,
where he faces charges following a human-smuggling conviction in the United States.

"What
I did was help a lot of young people who wanted to work for a better future.
What's the crime in bringing your brother so that he can get out of a war
zone?"

A
report released by the Sept. 11 commission staff last year examining how
terrorists travel the world cited Boughader as the
only "human smuggler with suspected links to terrorists" convicted to
date in the United States.

But
after Boughader was locked up, other smugglers
operating in Lebanon, Mexico
and the United States
continued to help Hezbollah-affiliated migrants in their effort to illicitly
enter from Tijuana, a U.S. immigration investigator said
in Mexican court documents obtained by the AP.

Another
smuggling network that is controlled by Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebel group - a
U.S.-designated terror organization - tried sneaking four Tigers over the
California-Mexico border en route to Canada not long after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigator Steven
Schultz said. The four were caught along with 17 other Sri Lankans,
all posing as Mexicans, attempting to enter ports at San Ysidro
and Otay Mesa.

An
AP investigation found these are just some of the many pipelines in Central and
South America, Mexico
and Canada that have
illegally channeled thousands of people into the United
States from so-called "special-interest"
countries - those identified by the U.S. government as sponsors or
supporters of terrorism.

Even
when caught, illegal immigrants from those countries and other nations are
sometimes released while awaiting deportation hearings,
then miss those court dates, according to the AP's investigation, which also
documented deep concerns about security threats along the lightly patrolled,
4,000-mile U.S.-Canada border.

The
AP reviewed hundreds of pages of court indictments, affidavits, congressional
testimony and government reports, and conducted dozens of interviews in Mexico and the United
States to determine how migrants from countries with
terrorist ties were brought illegally to America - and how the smugglers
they hired operated throughout the world.

Many
of the travelers, unassociated with any extremist group, genuinely came fleeing
war or in search of economic opportunity. But some, once in the United States, committed fraud to obtain Social
Security numbers, driver's licenses or false immigration documents, U.S. court
records showed.

Worse,
the boldness of the smuggling enterprises, the difficulty of shutting them down
and their potential to be used as terrorist conduits trouble many security
officials.

Lebanese
carpenter MahmoudYoussefKourani, smuggled in over the California
border, admitted spending part of his time in the United States raising money to send
back to his country to support Hezbollah - at least $40,000, according to an
FBI affidavit. Kourani, court records said, told the
FBI that his brother is the group's chief of military security in southern Lebanon, where
Hezbollah is widely admired as a resistance force.

U.S. homeland security officials maintain they know of no
cases of Al Qaeda operatives using smuggling operations to enter the United States
via traditional routes over the northern or southern boundaries, though they
have warned that recent intelligence suggests the terror group is eyeing the
borders as a way in.

At
least one Al Qaeda-linked man smuggled himself over the border. Nabil al-Marabh, a now-deported
Syrian citizen once No. 27 on the FBI's list of terror suspects and accused by
Canadian authorities of having connections to Usama
bin Laden's network, was caught sneaking from Canada
into New York in the back of a tractor-trailer in June 2001 with a fake
Canadian passport.

"Several
Al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through
Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal
entry," Jim Loy, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,
told a congressional committee in February. Further, he said, "entrenched
human smuggling networks and corruption in areas beyond our borders can be
exploited by terrorist organizations."

The
Boughader case and others show just how easy it would
be - even now, nearly four years after Sept. 11.

Just
weeks ago, a federal grand jury in Phoenix
indicted an Iranian tailor on charges of attempting to bring illegal immigrants
from his native country over the Arizona-Mexico border.

"Today
they could be smuggling people, tomorrow weapons," said John Torres,
deputy assistant director for smuggling and public safety investigations at
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. "The vulnerability there is a
criminal or terrorist organization could take advantage of that existing
infrastructure."

What
the records reveal is a labyrinth of networks, which use established routes
frequented for years by migrants of many nationalities.

Smugglers
employ recruiters and facilitators in such "special-interest"
countries as Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt,
Iraq and Pakistan. One
immigrant, in testimony against a now-convicted smuggler, described a
"market of passports" in northern Iraq
where individuals could illegally purchase documents to aid travel to America.

These
smugglers use staging areas and transportation coordinators in such places as Quito, Ecuador;
Lima, Peru;
Cali, Colombia; and Guatemala City. They pay foot guides, drivers
and stash-house operators in Mexico
and the United States.

They
have moved people by plane - into suburban Washington,
D.C., Florida,
California.
And they have crossed clients in vehicles or on foot into Texas,
New Mexico, Arizona,
California and over
the Canadian border, then helped deliver them to destinations across America.

They
have partnered with other smugglers transporting Mexican or Central American
migrants, sometimes swapping clients and transferring immigrants from
"special-interest" countries and other migrants in the same loads.

"This
is really a word-of-mouth business," said Laura Ingersoll,
an assistant U.S. attorney
in Washington, D.C.,
who has prosecuted at least a half-dozen smugglers who
moved illegal immigrants from Egypt
and Iraq into the United States.

"People
from places in the Middle East will hear about who to go through, and they tend
to be people from their same country, but once you get into the system we saw
associations that really were driven by, `What's the most effective way for me
to move my product?'" she said. "I may call someone else and
essentially sell my load to somebody who's got a boat or a truck or something
going out. It's just like sacks of potatoes."

"A
Mafia," is how one of Boughader's clients,
Roland NassibMaksoud, once
described the business.

Maksoud,
a liquor distributor, traveled from Lebanon
to Mexico
on a legal visa in late 2000, he told investigators, according to Mexican court
documents. In Mexico, he
said, he met two compatriots who passed along the name of a restaurateur in Tijuana who smuggled Lebanese into the United States.
They had gotten the name, Boughader, from a Beirut vendor who charged them $2,000 each for their visas
to Mexico.

When
Maksoud found the cafe, three Lebanese men were out
front eating.

"Salim is inside," they told him in Arabic.

Boughader
was meticulous about both his professions. He kept a spiral notebook with the
names of his smuggling clients, their phone numbers and the date they arrived
at his restaurant. In a separate ledger, Boughader
told the AP, he recorded the names and numbers of his cafe customers and their
favorite dishes.

He
went over instructions with his newest client. Maksoud
was to get a room at a nearby hotel, which he would share with another Lebanese
man waiting to cross. The fee would be $2,000 up front, plus another $2,000
once Maksoud was in the States.

In
January 2001, Maksoud was taken to a house on the
Mexican side where other migrants were awaiting passage - "different
people from different nationalities," he told investigators.

One
morning at 1 o'clock, he was awakened, crammed into the trunk of a vehicle and
told not to make a sound as the car made its way through the border port of
entry, a five-minute ride.

The
journey north was more arduous for other Boughader
clients. One stated in a Mexican court document that he trekked for four hours
over the hills into California
with Lebanese and Mexican migrants. A guide brought up the rear, erasing their
footprints.

Other
people-couriers use altered passports to fly clients to the United States.
One of them, convicted smuggler Mohammed Hussein Assadi,
schooled his Iraqi customers to carry nothing identifying them as Arab while
traveling. He advised one migrant to shave his mustache, another to dye her
hair blonde, still another to get a "European" haircut, U.S. court
records showed.

Central
and South America are popular transit points because of their proximity to the
United States and the relative ease with which migrants from countries with
terrorist ties can obtain tourist visas there - either legally or through
bribery. Assadi, an Iranian, worked from Ecuador,
sometimes using the alias Antonio Roosevelt ChoezArreaga. He spoke Spanish in addition to Farsi and Arabic.

Bribery
is another common tool for the organizations.

Boughader's
clients told U.S. and
Mexican investigators they paid thousands of dollars to obtain fraudulent visas
from Mexico's consular
office in Beirut.
A woman who oversaw the office between 1998 and 2001 was arrested on charges of
participating in the smuggling scheme.

In
May, the former director of immigration in Honduras
was arrested, accused of selling hundreds of Honduran passports to migrants
from Lebanon, China, Cuba
and Colombia - possibly to
aid their entry into the United
States. The investigation continues.

Maximiano
Ramos, a former Los Angeles supervisor with the
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, admitted taking $12,500 to smuggle
immigrants from the Philippines,
home of the Al Qaeda-linked militant group Abu Sayyaf.
From 1996 to 2002, at least 40 migrants were diverted from connecting flights
at Los AngelesInternationalAirport
and escorted out by security guards while Ramos was on duty.

Linda
Sesi, an assistant ombudsman for the city of Detroit, is awaiting trial on charges of conspiring with
four others to smuggle more than 200 migrants from Iraq,
Jordan and other Middle
Eastern countries into the United
States from 2001 up until her arrest last
September. The defendants allegedly charged clients more than $6,000 for
tourist visas to South America and then, using falsified documents, flew them
to Dulles airport outside Washington,
D.C.

Some,
including prosecutor Ingersoll, discount human
smuggling as "a risky road" not likely to be traveled by terror
operatives. But a former Sept. 11 commission counsel, Janice Kephart, said smuggling already is a chosen transportation
mode for such groups.

Intelligence
suggests that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of
terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups, according to the
Sept. 11 commission's terrorist travel report Kephart
helped write. Prior to Sept. 11, Al Qaeda employed smugglers to get jihad
recruits into Afghanistan
for training, the report said.

Terrorist
groups, including Al Qaeda, "use human smugglers and document forgers to a
great extent," Kephart said. "They know
their value. It only makes sense that they would transfer that to infiltrate
the United States."

Others
noted that post-Sept. 11 security measures - more stringent visa requirements
and security at airports and ports of entry - have made it tougher for
terrorist operatives to seek legal passage.

"If
you're a terrorist group looking to do something ...
why not send them another route?" said Walter Purdy, director of the TerrorismResearchCenter in Burke, Va.
"These people on the border, they don't come up and say, `We're part of
Hezbollah.' They say, `I want to get a job in America'
or `I'm going to see my cousin in New
York. Can you get me in?' The guy will say, `How much
money do you have?'"

Dismantling
groups smuggling people from countries with terrorist ties is a priority, said
Torres, the U.S.
immigration official. But often when one smuggler is busted another eagerly
fills his shoes.

Following
Boughader's arrest, smuggling of Lebanese through Tijuana ceased for several months, ICE investigator Ramon Romo said in court documents filed in Mexico. Then
some Lebanese men were apprehended at the Tijuana
airport and another by the U.S. Border Patrol, and in April 2003 intelligence
revealed that five members of Hezbollah were preparing to cross the border, Romo stated.

The
information was passed on to Mexican authorities, who made some arrests.

Others
have made it through.

Kourani,
who helped raise donations for Hezbollah, entered the United States via the Lebanon-Tijuana pipeline,
paying $3,000 in Beirut
to get a Mexican visa, according to federal court documents. On Feb. 4, 2001,
he and another man were smuggled into California
in the hidden compartment of a vehicle.

Last
month, Kourani was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison
for conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. His lawyer,
William Swor, said Kourani
is not a member of Hezbollah and hasn't spoken in years with the brother who
has a leadership role in the group. Prosecutors alleged the brother directed Kourani'sU.S.
activities.

ICE
spokesman Manny Van Pelt refused to confirm that Boughader
smuggled Kourani. Boughader
himself couldn't specifically recall MahmoudKourani, though he noted he moved a number of people with
the last name "Kourani" who were from MahmoudKourani's hometown of Yater, Lebanon, a longtime Hezbollah
outpost.

Boughader
acknowledged transporting a Lebanese man who worked at al-Manar,
a global satellite television network owned and operated by Hezbollah. The U.S.
State Department added al-Manar to its Terror
Exclusion List in 2004, meaning anyone associated with the station may be
refused entry or deported from the United States.

"For
us, Hezbollah are not terrorists," said Boughader,
a Mexican of Lebanese descent, echoing the feelings of most Lebanese. "I
regret that what I was doing is against the law, but I don't regret what I did
to help people."

Along
the border, people are still getting such help day in and day out.

After
Sept. 11, Boughader said, "I changed my phone
numbers and told my sister if a Lebanese showed up at the restaurant to turn
him away. But they kept coming." And, for at least nine more months, he
kept smuggling, he admitted when he pleaded guilty in the United States.

"The
checks they do at the border are still very bad," he said, "because,
regardless of everything, it is still easy to cross."

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